Jan 14: Le lieu du crime/Scene of the Crime (1987-- Andre Techine)

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I liked this film much more than Hotel des Amerique.

For all the apparent focus on the boy, on the criminals and the crime, it's very much about...the grandmother! I like how that fact sneaks up on you in the film until you realize that much of the action revolves around how the various characters deal with her. It should have been clear to me quite early in the film when we see her bossing her grandson and conspiring with her son-in-law, and I didn't even get it in the excruciating First Communion celebration when she compels everyone into fitting into the universe the way she wants it. She's the missing center, the energy that drives most of the protagonists' actions.

I really only got it when Techine uncharacteristically includes a clunky line of dialog for Lili to the effect that she always tried to please her mother, and that had been the problem with her life. Her affair with the good criminal Martin was her (finally!) rebelling against her mother. The drama and punishment around her love with Martin was preferable to her following her mother's desire for a conventional, bourgeoise life, and she ends on the road to a new life...having lost much of the love in her life and looking at confinement.

Lili's son, Thomas, is a parallel character. Unlike Lili, though, Thomas rebels from the beginning and suffers mightily for it. Outspoken, disobedient and insolent, he fights grandmother, school, church and father. Had Lili rebelled earlier, as she says she wishes she had, she would have been Thomas. Thomas, too, ends on the road to a new life, one with less love in it than he might have had.

I've seen parallel characters in Techine before -- Adrian and Sarah from Temoins, for example. I like the way Techine guides pairs like this through a narrative, connecting them via the criminals (Scene) or free-spirit (Temoins) and leading them on similar and contrasting paths. And in each case, the elements that connect the parallel characters leave their traces on the protagonists; that's almost a theme, too.

I also appreciated the link between Thomas and Lili in this film. You don't often see the relationship of a boy and his mother at the focus of a film, and it's tender and painful here. Perhaps I'll revisit Almodovar's All about My Mother to see how he deals with this topic.

Even though I like so much of this film's character and plot structure, I still felt left jerked through some of the character development -- I didn't see Lili falling for Martin so fast; I didn't see Maurice as in love with Lili. I like the decentered story here, the misleading focus, the fast editing, but I'm (again) put off by some of the gaps in the characters. Not sure why I can take the gaps in everything but the characters. Perhaps because the film is so set in a mimetic paragdigm I want to see the mimesis in the characters, too.